Ryan Day describes 'champagne problems' with winning national championship

Ryan Day described Ohio State’s “champagne problems,” and no, Swifties, the Buckeyes’ coach isn’t talking about Taylor Swift.

Basically, Day described the challenge of winning a national championship which is now you have to do it again. It was quite the mountain to climb for the head coach with tremendous pressure. But the 2024-25 campaign is over and it’s off to maintain that type of excellence moving forward.

“I think maybe it was Belichick or somebody who said they’re champagne problems, you know, win one, there’s a lot that comes with that,” Day said on The Triple Option. “And I think for us, because we ended the season so much later than almost everybody in the country, so many staffs were set. We missed a couple weeks of recruiting. You think about that Tennessee game, it was played on December 21, we ended the season on January 20. So that’s different. I think that’s significant.” 

Coaches leave, players leave, etc. Day knows this. Ohio State saw OC Chip Kelly leave for the Las Vegas Raiders and DC Jim Knowles went to Big Ten foe Penn State in the same role.

“And so after the confetti falls, and you know, there’s going to be things like this to come up, to get to your point, like there’s going to be opportunity for guys and but, you know, we have a core in place here,” Day said. “We want to make sure that there’s consistency in all three phases. And you know, when you talk about our offense and what Brian Hartline has done in recruiting, and you know, he was the coordinator, and then Chip came in … now he’s the coordinator. You know, this is a guy who’s paid his dues here. 

“You know, he didn’t just jump to the next job, he learned and grew and got better with every year. Receiver play is the best there is in the country. And so, you know, you get guys like Keenan Bailey and different people within the program that you just want to work with. 

But with the guys in place, Day maintained consistency because the messaging is the same for Ohio State, just with some tweaks.

“And then on defense, it’s the same thing, you know, Tim Walton, Matt Guerrieri, James Laurinaitis, Larry Johnson,” Day said. “I mean, they were integral parts of the day to day operation. So, we want to make sure that there’s consistency in those things and we’re not going to change, you know the Ohio State defense is the Ohio State defense. The Ohio State offense is the Ohio State offense, and we want to make sure that we bring folks in that embrace that.”